Still and sparkling

A bunch of thoughts I haven’t bothered to flesh out

I’m struggling with writing regularly lately, so I thought I’d take a freebie and give you a scattershot of what I’ve been ~planning~ to write about and then never getting around to. Here we go.

Two weeks ago was JD’s and my two-year wedding anniversary. During the weeks leading up to it, I was filled with a sort of general dread and doubt about our relationship and our decision to ever get married in the first place. Marriage is a beautiful thing, but it’s also a super WEIRD thing, signing a contract in which you agree to stay with a person forever and intertwine all the detritus of your individual lives together. It freaks me out from time to time, to be honest. Everything’s fine–this exact same thing happened to me before our first anniversary too, and I imagine it’ll happen every year from here on out. JD and I talked about it honestly and it’s not like I’m secretly packing my bags, waiting for the right moment to slip quietly into the night and never return. We have, like any couple, the same issues and arguments that come up from time to time and the ability to pick a fight when we’re especially cranky with each other. What I’m saying is, it’s good to clear the air in a marriage from time to time, and establish where you are right now, and where you want to be, and acknowledge over a candlelit table with a few good cocktails how bonkers it is to have ever gotten married at all.

I am not a sports fan other than when the UK Wildcats are in the championships or the Olympics are on, but I am enjoying the energy in the city now that the Cubs are in the World Series. We’re not doing great so far, but still. Yesterday JD and I went on our usual bike ride for groceries and the roads were crowded, and of course Wrigleyville is a shitshow. I don’t care. It’s nice to see the city excited and energized and frankly I’m okay with all of our bars making as much money as possible. Go Cubs, etc.

I’ve been kind of lonely lately. It’s my own fault in a way–I work all week and am so glad when Friday evening comes but then there’s nothing going on because I didn’t make plans. I have a small number of friends, which is plenty for me, but they have other friends and activities and busy, active lives as well, so it’s not easy to make spontaneous plans to hang out. I miss college for that reason alone, that and for having a core group of buddies that I could almost always rely on to be with me when I went out, or stayed in to watch movies, or whatever. I miss having one or two bosom buddies with whom it was understood that that’s just who I was going to spend all of your social time with. I get tired of the adult reality of having one friend from college, and one from childhood, and one who’s a former roommate or coworker, and then a smattering of friends-of-friends, and none of them know each other so it doesn’t make much sense to spend time with them all at the same time unless you want to exhaust yourself introducing strangers to one another. So you go have drinks or see a show with friends individually, which is truly lovely most of the time, don’t get me wrong, but mostly what I am saying is that Sex and the City lied to me.

This election is the worst and the only good thing about it is that it’s almost over. There’s nothing I can say about it that hasn’t already been said scores of times. I did my early voting today and am being really smug about it on social media. I live in a solidly blue state, but I turn out for almost every election. The suffragist movement was hardly perfect (turns out, rich white ladies can be real dicks!), but still, my foremothers didn’t chain themselves to fences and go on hunger strikes just so my generation could opt out due to apathy. I LOVE voting. And it was more of a pleasure to do it in this election than in any other.

Work has been a struggle recently. I like the work but I’m still in the middle of a steep learning curve, and I don’t think I’ll come out the other side very soon. I hate being the person who has to ask a lot of questions all the time, instead of being the person other people come to for help. I’m only really comfortable when I’m living my life in a flawless and unimpeachable way, which is always hard but particularly so when you feel like you’re floundering in a career you care about.

Okay, this felt like a little bit of a bummer post. To even things out, here’s one of the best tweets I’ve seen recently:

Walking and looking at my phone when a man on a bike shouted, "Try watching where you're walking!!!!" before TOTALING himself on a trash can